MovieGallery 1.5 Release Notes

MovieGallery is a replacement for the build-in Gallery app found on Android devices such as the Droid, Kindle Fire, Xoom, NOOKcolor and Galaxy Nexus.

The build-in video player on Android devices is somewhat limited in the way it displays the collection of video files you might have on your device. While handy for your own recordings, the thumbnail display method used in the Gallery app is non-adjustable, making it very tricky to determine which video is which. Because of this, we created MovieGallery.

MovieGallery extends the build-in Gallery, and lets you use your own images to display for your movies.

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In addition to just providing a cool-looking way to browse through your movies, it also adds extended functionality to the build-in video player with on-screen brightness/volume controls, skip forward/backward, touch to pause, zoom, and even remembers the position for each of your video files.

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People often say that a picture tells more than a thousand words, and I think with the images above, it actually does.

I just finished updating MovieGallery and MovieGallery Free on the Android Market, and if you have been using MovieGallery before, you are in for a nice surprise. For my own standards, going from a 1.4 version to a 1.5 version within such a short time is quite a big step. DVD Catalyst users know I take these so-called minor updates quite seriously, usually marking some major enhancements that other developers often see as an opportunity to jump a major version and charge an upgrade fee, but 1.4 to 1.5 within 2 weeks is something I think I can justify.

NEW:

* Honeycomb enhancements.

Since I started development on MovieGallery, people have been asking about the menu bar at the bottom during video playback. Because I did not want to create 2 versions of MovieGallery, a “phone edition” and an “HD edition”, I developed MovieGallery with compatibility in mind. It works great on just about any Android device. But, as a result, I could not use certain features of the newer Android versions in order to maintain compatibility. Well, in MovieGallery 1.5, I applied some magic, and did both. Now, the menu-bar in Honeycomb is dimmed as it should in MovieGallery during video playback.

* Ice Cream Sandwich enhancements.

Similar as for Honeycomb, I figured while I was at it anyway, I did the same for the ICS button-bar. Unfortunately, due to the way ICS works, if you tap on the screen, the buttons will appear and remain visible. If you back-out to the Gallery view and then play your video again (it remembers where you left off) the button bar will be hidden again.

* Theming.

With Honeycomb and ICS support, I also made MovieGallery use the theme of the device. Earlier versions of MovieGallery used the old 2.2 look, but now, it uses the theme of your device, so it looks fresh and clean on Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich.

* Quicklist button.

Also new in MovieGallery 1.5 is a Quicklist button (don’t worry, you can hide it). While it basically contradicts the reason why I created MovieGallery, the Quicklist button simply brings up a list of all the video files MovieGallery found with the tap of a button, and with another tap, it will start playing your video. This eliminates the need to flip through your images to find the movie you want to watch.

* Image loading.

Because MovieGallery displays images, it takes some memory to run. If you have a lot of movies, or large images, this can cause it to exceed the Android limitations. With MovieGallery 1.5, I changed the way the images are loaded, which should eliminate most memory-related issues.

MovieGallery 1.5 is currently available in the Android Market, Amazon has approved it as well, and hopefully somewhere next week, Barnes & Noble will activate the update.

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